


Born From the Ashes

by vassalady



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Dark, Dark Character, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Minor Canonical Character(s), Murder, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:36:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2179953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vassalady/pseuds/vassalady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumlow has lost everything, and he is filled with one thought: revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born From the Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> I felt the need to write a dark ficlet, and my Rumlow/Steve fic is stalled, so I decided to do a gen Rumlow piece. (Though I do make reference to it.) This is speculation on what might happen to him after the end of the movie as well as an attempt to bring him closer in line with the Crossbones familiar in the comics (even with the puns, but that's very minor.) Draws from the Red Menace storyline some, as well as his comics backstory, though much of it is irreconcilable with MCU canon (like the Crossbones name) and therefore I just made stuff up for this.
> 
> Guest appearances include Rachel Leighton and Sinthea Schmidt. Changed up both of their backstories a little, since neither exists in the MCU as of writing this.
> 
> WARNINGS: This work contains many mentions and references of rape, torture, and murder, though none of it is graphic.
> 
> This could definitely be a lot darker, but I hope you enjoy it for what it is.

Brock is going to kill him. He’s going to kill fucking Steve Rogers and all his little friends. He’s going to kill that fucking black fucker who left him in that building to die.

He’s going to fucking kill them all.

His skin still feels like it’s on fire whenever he moves. It stretches, painfully, across his skin. Parts of his clothes got fused from the heat, and they had to be cut out along with great big chunks of flesh. He was in agony for weeks.

He still is.

Brock always considered himself a handsome man. Now he’s a monster.

He’s read all the files. Read how Johann Schmidt had a burnt face. He’s seen the posters, the photos, the paintings. But it’s not like Brock’s face. It’s not mottled and glossy like his. It’s not a terrain of mountains and valleys mapped all over.

He doesn’t have hair anymore, at least not anything other than gross patches.

He refuses to go to prison, though, so the minute he can, he breaks out of the hospital, kills the guards on his way out and a couple nurses just for fun, because he’s angry.

He is going to kill Steve Rogers, slowly, and painfully.

As the days and weeks and months pass, he hides out like a rat. He feeds on scraps and waste. He goes from hideout to hideout, only to find them all routed by FBI. He lives in the street and in abandoned buildings, because there is nowhere else to go.

\--

Halloween rolls around. Brock is aware of the weather changing, of it getting colder. Suddenly, there are little kids on the streets in costumes. Brock spits when he sees every Captain America.

Some punk tries to hassle him, calling him things like freak and Frankenstein, so Brock shows him what a real monster is. In the end, blood still drying on his hands, he kills the dumb kid. He tears off the skull mask and looks at it for a long moment. He realizes that this will do. This will do nicely.

Brock Rumlow doesn’t exist, no more than that day when Johann Schmidt became the Red Skull.

He’s Crossbones.

\--

Crossbones is a name that strikes fear in people. It was too easy to take over a few drug rings. They’ve expanded their market, going from dealing just coke to dealing in heavy arms. 

Crossbones finds it lonely, though. He calls upon a girl he once knew. She was just a kid back then, but she’s grown up fine. Dyes her hair pink, deals in petty theft, works in a pretty little boutique. And boy, does she have a body. All curves, but with the flattest stomach he’s seen, and an ass he just wants to ream. He might not have let the skinny bitch get away if he knew how she would turn out.

She remembers him, even with his body as destroyed as it is. She has her own wounds, courtesy of him, wounds that marr her own beautiful flesh. But she spits in his face, defies him. Calls him names. For a while, he has his fun with her. But eventually, she escapes. He’s sore about that. But she’s not worth his time anymore. He has bigger things to accomplish than worry about one petty fucking girl with old burn marks down her back.

His arm still smarts, though, from where she stabbed him in the arm with a knife. So he decides he’ll expand his gang’s operations. That’s how they end up trading in skin.

There’s a new girl that arrives, an illegal immigrant from Germany, whose student visa expired, but she stayed stateside anyway. What catches him is her last name: Schmidt. Likely no relation, it’s not at all an uncommon name, but he takes her anyway.

He trains her, shows her what she can be, what she can do. It’s a matter of months before finally she kills a man just so she can eat. Crossbones feeds her well. She almost cuts him with a knife, but he just laughs. She’s better than he hoped.

She calls herself Sin, and she’s as likely to stab him in the back as anyone. It’s fun, working again with someone who hates your very core. Too bad Rogers didn’t actually know who he was, but of course, it was fun messing with his mind, too. In more subtle ways than he had to with Sin, but he’s sure it keeps Rogers up at night.

\--

Rogers has moved into a clubhouse with more of his little Avengers friends. It makes Crossbones sick to watch it. They were so close to being rid of them and people like them. Then Rogers ruins it all.

But he’s not sure what makes him angrier, when he sees with them that black now calling himself the Falcon or the asset play-acting at hero.

The Falcon doesn’t surprise him. But the asset does. How blind they are to use a broken machine, to treat it like a person, to forgive its crimes. It’s a hypocrisy that he swears to stamp out.

He watches from the sidelines as the last of HYDRA fucks itself over. They underestimate Rogers and his team. When next they meet, Crossbones won’t.

So he waits. And he plans. And he dreams of slicing open that black fucker as he screams, dreams of making the asset kneel for him again, dreams of ripping Romanoff limb from limb. He dreams of making Rogers watch it all before doing the same to him. And finally, when he’s had his fill, when he grows bored, he’ll strangle Rogers and feel his life give out. 

Sin calls him wicked. It’s the nicest thing she’s ever said to him.

Thing is, he’ll know he’ll succeed. He no longer sees what has happened to him as a curse. It’s a gift. Because he realizes that he’s capable. He’s as good if not better than the Red Skull.

After all, it’s not just a skull that people fear. It’s Crossbones, too.

He laughs at his own joke.


End file.
